Zen Master Dogen

All buddhas' compassion and sympathy for sentient beings
are neither for their own sake or for others.
It is just the nature of buddha-dharma.
Isn't it apparent that insects and animals nurture their offspring,
exhausting themselves with painful labors,
yet in the end have no reward when their offspring are grown?
In this way the compassion of small creatures for their offspring
naturally resembles the thought of all buddhas for sentient beings.


Zen Master Dogen, From:Moon In A Dewdrop, North Point Press

MEDITATION IS A SACRED ACTIVITY

When a person sits and meditates, it is a special situation; it is a sacred act of some kind. It has been said by Petrul Rinpoche, a great teacher about 100 years ago, that even if you have impure thoughts in the meditation hall, those thoughts are regarded as sacred thoughts. The most impure, most crude or confused thoughts, even those are regarded as sacred thoughts. Along with that, a sense of appreciating the discipline is in itself important, whether you have accomplished the discipline over all or not. If you fall asleep on your cushion, or feel that you haven't actually sat and meditated at all -- as soon as you sit on your cushion, you begin to mentally venture out all over the world, and the only thing that reminds you is when the ending gong sounds and you realize you are meditating, supposedly, physically -- even then, even such daydreams and things like that are important. Meditation is a sacred activity.

From "The First Foundation: Mindfulness of Body," in the 1973 Hinayana-Mahayana Transcripts, page 39.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
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SELF-EXISTING PLEASURE

One of the definite characteristics of the Buddhist tantra, at least on the level of mahamudra [an advanced level of practice], is not running away from sense pleasures, but rather identifying with them, working with them as part of the working basis. That is an outstanding part of the tantric message. Pleasure in this case includes every kind of pleasure: psychosomatic, physical, psychological, and spiritual. Here it is quite different from the way in which spiritual materialists might seek pleasure -- by getting into the "other." In this case, it is getting into "this." There is a self-existing pleasureableness that is completely hollow from the ordinary point of view of ego's pleasure orientation...If you look at pleasure from the point of view of nakedness, the situation of being completely exposed, any pleasure you experience is full because of its hollowness.

From "Mahamudra," in ILLUSION'S GAME: The Life and Teaching of Naropa. Pages 120 to 121.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 6,057 subscribers.

Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn@shambhala.com.

Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications, the Archive of his unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the following link: http://OceanofDharma.com